Estes Park Opinion

Selling alcohol to minors is serious problem

The recent liquor compliance checks of local businesses revealed a shocking statistic.

Twelve of the 34 businesses that were visited by local police and state liquor enforcement officials were found guilty of serving alcohol to minors.

That's 35 percent. And, that's too high, by anyone's estimation.

What's really frustrating/disappointing (or both) about this is that police notified all businesses with a mailed flier earlier in the year that compliance checks were coming. And, yet, they failed anyway.

Equally disappointing is that two of the violators - Safeway and Chipper's Lanes - were repeat offenders.

We have to tip our hat to the Estes Park Town Board for taking these two cases seriously. The trustees grilled the owners, their managers, and counsel. The trustees wanted to know why these violations had occurred and what was being done to prevent future violations.

The public "dressing down" of these businesses was obviously embarrassing for them. While there are no assurances that they won't be repeat offenders in the future, that appears unlikely. Officials from each business are making serious changes in how they sell alcohol and how they train their employees. Safeway is even bringing in new technology that will essentially make it impossible for an employee to sell to a minor.

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Chipper's Lanes is using the experience of their violating server as a teaching tool for all their employees at all of their locations.

We applaud the efforts.

At the same time, we strongly encourage other violators who still have to go before the town board to review their procedures carefully, make sure all their servers are trained adequately, and do whatever is necessary to make sure that selling alcohol to minors is stopped.

We're not naïve. We know that minors have been purchasing alcohol since the first beverage was capped.

However, we should be diligent in trying to make that purchase as difficult as possible.

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